Top > Foreign Policy > Environment > Johannesburg Summit 2002 The World Summit on Sustainable Development > Schedule and Correspondent's Reports of the Seminars in the Japan Pavilion (Ubuntu Village, Johannesburg) > Water - People - Sustainability

Provisional Translation (Check against Delivery)

Water - People - Sustainability

Water - People - Sustainability Water - People - Sustainability Water - People - Sustainability Water - People - Sustainability

KEYNOTE ADDRRESS BY H.E. MR. RYUTARO HASHIMOTO,
FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF JAPAN,
CHAIRMAN OF GLOBE JAPAN,
CHAIRMAN OF THE NATIONAL STEERING COMMITTEE OF THE THIRD WORLD WATER FORUM
("WATER, PEOPLE, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT",
JAPAN PAVILION, UBUNTU VILLAGE, THURDSAY, AUGUST 29, 2002)

Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

(Introduction)

Three years and a half ago, I was looking at the horizon extending beyond the red soil spreading below. I was on a helicopter on the way to Kwamhlanga Village one hundred kilometres east of Pretoria to attend the inauguration ceremony together with then Vice President Mbeki of a waterworks facility completed with Japanese assistance as part of the water supply plan for KwaNdebele. Complex mixture of despair and hope for humanity overwhelmed me as I wondered why a government would wish to deprive of its people so much dignity as to drive them into totally arid land. This project to bring water to the land seemed to me a tangible gesture certain to give hope for tomorrow to the people of the "Rainbow Country."

Water was the catalyst for ancient civilisations. Egypt was the boon of the Nile. The civilisations in Asia, namely, China, India and Mesopotamia, were all creations of water. Life disembarked from the sea, and the human embryo floats in the water in the womb. A civilisation therefore perishes when it invites disfavour of water. The rise by irrigation and the fall by the damage from salt due to irrigation in Shumer is well known. One cannot forget either that the mass migration of the Bantu tribe was triggered by the lack of rainfall in the formerly green Sahara. I would like to share with you some of my thoughts on water, keeping in mind the South African phrase "amanzi-ayimpilo", that is, "water is life."

1. WATER AND DAILY LIFE, PEOPLE AND TECHNOLOGIES

(Diversity and Vulnerability of Water)

The human being cannot live without water. However, water, like other resources, is not indefinite, and is no longer clean upon contact with the human being. Common awareness, shared wisdom and concrete actions are needed on water as resources for leading dignified life and for utilising human wisdom so that the human being can keep enjoying prosperity on the Earth. I would like to pay tribute to Secretary-General Kofi Annan for listing water as one of the priorities for the "World Summit on Sustainable Development."

We must check what situations water may be facing and what measures the international community may be taking thereof before tackling issues related to water. In this age of advanced information and communication technology, we should not only utilise it fully to develop a network of information sharing but also translate such information into tangible results. It is essential in this context to promote partnerships among such stakeholders as NGOs, corporations, international organisations and countries on international river basins or lakes. Many meetings have been held in Mar del Plata, Dublin, Rio de Janeiro, Marrakesh, the Hague, Bonn and so on. It is encouraging that slowly but steadily has global understanding been built concerning water.

Yet, water has so many facets. I flew for twenty hours day before yesterday to get here from Japan, over the water called the East China Sea, the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Looking at the ocean, deep blue during the day and completely black during the night, I realised that most of these coastal areas were quite populous monsoon areas that sometimes suffer from too much water. Many countries frequently hit by monsoons have developed and consolidated, over the years, the concept of water rights as well as the technologies of paddy fields and terraced paddies to control floods and ensure efficiency. With the destruction of abundant forests in the upper streams that were the prerequisite of their invention, however, they were faced anew with the fight against floods.

When I had an opportunity to fly across this Continent from north to south or from east to west several years ago, I was struck by its diversity. Even the colour of the sky changed from above the Sahara to above the forests, which reflected on the aircraft in light brown and in blue. On this Continent where the human being was born, there are some areas with abundant water and others where a girl has to walk for six hours on average per day to get three bucketfuls of water. Expansion of dry ground is accelerated by human activities.

With regard to human activities, there are examples of the vanquished civilisations having more advanced water technologies than the conquerors. For instance, the irrigation facilities of the Incas were amazingly precise. The Civilisation of Chavin de Huantar of 1000 B.C. boasted an efficient waterway with only one centimetre of difference in height from one point to the other, nine kilometres away. A tunnel was excavated at Cumbemayo, three thousand five hundred and fifty metres in altitude in the Andes, for an irrigation waterway which to date benefits the farming in the Cajamarca Basin. Incidentally, this is the oldest tunnel waterway in the world. We know as a result of excavation that the desert on the Pacific coast of Peru had minute irrigation networks at the time of the Incas. These episodes demonstrate that people live with water and that water too lives with people.

Water can at the same time be vulnerable. As an avid mountaineer often having been to Nepal out of the love for the Himalayas, I regret to say that retrogression of the glacier is noticeable even after a few years. The glacier thaws to form lakes in the mountains, which may in turn overflow and flood the villages below causing much damage as they are not prepared. Rapid glacier retrogression is occurring also in the Alps in Europe. One human generation is not a long term in the view of the nature. All of us, the scientists, consumers, producers, administrators and voters, must pause to reflect upon the harsh reality of such phenomena happening in one generation's time.

(How to Grasp the Relationship between Water and the Human Being)

There have been innumerable discussions on how to deal with diverse issues related to water. Since the theme of the Johannesburg Summit is sustainable development and we are to ponder upon how to achieve development while preserving environment, I would like to draw your attention today to the relationship between human activities and the power of the nature. In interacting with water through daily life, the human being has been increasingly relying upon wisdom, and therefore, technologies. Thus, it may be useful to use the linkage among water, the human being and wisdom to streamline our thoughts.

Water is an essential element of our daily life. Securing steady supply of fresh water, providing safe water, ensuring sanitation and balancing forest preservation as naturally available dams with human activities are basic requirements for human life.

As water is inevitably soiled after contact with the human being, prevention of water pollution is also necessary. The destructive power of human activities has already surpassed the self-cleansing capacity of the nature. The solution can thus only be found in human wisdom, especially technologies. On the other hand, floods and tsunamis most ably demonstrate to the human being how powerful the nature is. The fight against the nature is another aspect of human life. In other words, disaster prevention through technologies has to be addressed as well. This is probably why it was said in ancient China that those who controlled water controlled and pacified the country.

The human being has always been trying to coexist with the nature by taking advantage of their wisdom and technologies. There is much variety in such technologies. The know-how and technologies in daily life include drilling wells in dry areas, constructing and maintaining modern systems for water supply and drainage, controlling forests and floods and even desalination of seawater. As these technologies are unfortunately not available to all the countries, development assistance in the form of technology sharing and financial resources as appropriate is needed.

Harmonisation of the three elements in the human-water interaction, namely, water, people and wisdom, appears to be required. In order to pass the limited resources safely in the hands of future generations, it is important that we stop exploiting the nature in the name of civilisation and create a recycling society.

2. CONCRETE ACTIONS

(Homemakers and Farmers)

All of this is of course easy to say but difficult to realise.

Nevertheless, the most significant of all the water-related issues may be how to ensure dignity as a person and dignified life for six billion people. To facilitate a concrete analysis, let me take up, among the "people", the homemakers who are responsible for water in their households and the farmers who use two-thirds of water resources.

Upon my visit to the Jomo Kenyatta University for Agriculture and Technology in Kenya, I saw representatives of women farmers participate in the open lecture and share their know how. One of them was teaching anther from a different region how to prevent evaporation of water from ground by putting straws in the ridge, a traditional farming method in her region. I wondered privately if the farmers in the industrialised countries could follow this example as they lost most of farm water because of large-scale field cultivation. The farmers were also making simple pushcarts that they could maintain themselves so that the farming would be easier and more efficient. The female leaders' participation itself impressed me as a symbol of female empowerment. In addition, discussions on many themes, including on their own villages, as they boarded together while participating in the lecture, would eventually lead to the democracy at the grass roots level.

Another stimulating example of female empowerment related to water is found in Kenya. A Japanese woman was sent originally as an expert on the population issue to the village of Enzaro, four hundred kilometres west of Nairobi. Believing that the population issue could not be solved without betterment of women's life, she introduced a new furnace into the local kitchen. Any Kenyan participant today would know that the kitchens in rural areas of Kenya are often equipped with ovens made of three stones. These ovens force women to be preoccupied with collecting wood for fuel and getting water. The Japanese woman remembered a traditional furnace in her hometown in northern Japan and introduced a similar one to the homemakers. The new one had a hole to make fire and three stovetops to put pots and pans, one of which was to be used for a fixed pot with a faucet so that sterile boiled water would be available any time. The furnace was made with clay, which was free as it was produced in the village, and its design and size was left to the creativity and ingenuity of the homemakers. They were so active in renovating their kitchens that all the three hundred farming households in the village immediately came to have new furnaces. This resulted in four major improvements in the village life. One, they could prevent infectious diseases and parasites. Two, the women had more time to participate in social activities with less time spent on water and wood collection. Three, forest conservation became possible as thermal efficiency tripled to reduce wood consumption. Four, there were positive effects on the population issue, the original theme, as the homemakers became more confident of their abilities for improving their life and engaged in more amicable dialogue with their partners. This is a typical instance of sustainable development originating from the kitchen.

In fact, Japan itself experienced such evolution in its rural areas. A kitchen revolution took place in relation to water supply to reduce working time for the women to bring about female empowerment, which led not only to development in the rural societies but also to national economic growth. During the Second World War, most of the communities in Japan were burnt to ashes by carpet-bombing. Consequently, we had to restart our nation building despite the confusion after the defeat. I was then a second-year pupil in the elementary school. Schools were built first in the ruins all over Japan to consolidate primary education. We also set up simplified waterworks in rural areas, which alleviated the burden of water drawing on the homemakers and, above all, greatly contributed to improved public hygiene. In 2000, Japan provided ODA (Official Development Assistance) amounting to one billion eight hundred and fifty million (1,850,000,000) US dollars for projects on water and sanitation in developing countries. It is because of the conviction drawn from Japan's own past experience.

I understand that wells are beginning to play a useful role for better quality of life in dry areas of this Continent. We are more successful in our ODA when the residents themselves take charge of the management of a well after it is drilled, forming such entities as a management committee. The responsibility for their own well means accountability in a broader sense, which is critical for the water quality control. Such grass roots level success proves the need for equal partnership in ODA implementation respectful of ownership of the local community. Handed-down charities do not succeed.

(From Johannesburg to Kyoto)

Water related issues go beyond human activities and borders. Water resources disputes have long been the cause of conflicts. So many challenges exist, such as water and poverty, water and ecosystem, water and urbanisation, water and natural disasters and prevention of desertification and afforestation. Both the industrialised and developing countries must exert resolve and make considerable efforts for achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people having no access to safe water by 2015.

Fortunately, many participants seem to have consensus as far as water is concerned to make the Johannesburg Summit an action-oriented meeting. However, actions need money, and public funding cannot satisfy all the financing requirements. The World Water Vision estimates that one hundred and eighty billion US dollars would be necessary for infrastructure building alone. In the Type 2 meeting on water held in Washington late last month in which government officials as well as representatives of private corporations and NPOs of both industrialised and developing countries participated, common understanding was formulated on the importance of an enhanced partnership based on ownership for the solution of water related issues. Johannesburg is hoped to be a starting point of specific actions by the participants. For example, industrialised countries can review their own water resources management systems, and developing countries can revisit their water policies. One certain urban city, which has been criticised for wasteful and large-scale leakage of water, could achieve much by simply allocating some funds to ameliorating the problem.

Strong attention is also being paid to sanitation at the Summit. While this attention is warranted and welcome, we need to be extremely careful not to give an impression that we are talking about flush toilets in the areas where there is no sufficient supply of potable water. As I stated earlier, water raises diverse and multi-faceted questions that require well-planned and diversified responses. One possible way to tackle the sanitation issue is to introduce technologies used in other fields. In Japan, an eco-toilet system using sawdust and bacteria has been introduced on an experimental basis to deal with the human waste left by the climbers of Mount Fuji. This could be a valid demonstration that all available wisdom should be mobilised for water related issues.

Next march, half a year from the Johannesburg Summit, the third meeting of the World Water Forum will be held in Kyoto, Shiga and Osaka. Kyoto, abundant with water since ancient times, has been the hub of water transportation. This was the reason for the city to enjoy the status of the centre of Japanese politics and culture for two thousand years. It would give me great pleasure if Kyoto could newly become a city contributing to the world through the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change by the end of this year and through the review next March of the Johannesburg commitment on water.

(Conclusion)

I am told that there is a saying in the desert areas of the Middle East that "word is cloud, deed is rain." I would sincerely wish that the words in Johannesburg would bring about rain to the world.

Thank you for your attention.

Back to Index